State legislation pending the governor’s action in Arizona would allow individual businesses to discriminate against some customers based on personal religious beliefs.

The legislation is mainly designed to allow businesses, or individuals who work in a business, to deny services to gay people based on religious grounds. For example, a bakery could refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple if the baker exerts a religious exception.

No matter what one thinks about gay marriage, this kind of legislation is a bad idea. It injects a religious litmus test into our civil society in a way that could have many unintended consequences.

While designed specifically to allow discrimination against gays, this kind of legislation would actually allow all kinds of petty acts of discrimination in the public arena.

What would have happened during the civil rights era if a restaurant owner could have refused to serve black customers based on his personal religious beliefs? (And there were a lot of whites who, in the 1950s and 1960s, based their anti-black actions on religious grounds. If you go back further in history, many white Southerners claimed that the Bible supported slavery during the Civil War era. The invoking of religion has long been the excuse for all kinds of discrimination both in this country and around the world.)

Nominally supported by conservatives as a measure to “protect” religion from litigation, the Arizona legislation really doesn’t reflect true conservative values. While it’s designed to allow conservative Christians to refuse services to gays, it could also open the door for others to deny services to Christians, too.

On the surface, however, the bill appeals to those who want to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves. There are a lot of conservative Christian groups who believe they are “under attack” by government policies. That’s especially true in public schools where timid and nutty administrators have greatly overreacted to displays of religious iconography during the Christmas season.

But those incidents, while getting a lot of publicity, are relatively few overall and an aberration of the norm. In the U.S., there is no big attack on Christians as some seem to believe.

The groups behind those kinds of claims are playing the victim card in an effort to rally support and raise money for their foundations.

If you want to see what real anti-Christian bias is all about, go to North Korea or the Middle East where Christians are tortured and killed for their beliefs.

Human history is rife with discrimination based on religion, skin color, gender and ethnic differences. Jews have long been persecuted in Europe and the Middle East. The English hated the Irish. Islamists hate Jews and Christians with equal disdain. Americans hated the Indians. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Polish and many other groups have been the target of discrimination. And in every example, there are those who have wrapped themselves in some kind of religious blanket to proclaim their discrimination is really just divine providence.

The real question in the Arizona legislation is this: Do individuals who provide economic services to the public need legislation to protect their personal religious beliefs?

How, for example, does baking a cake for a gay couple defile the baker’s religion? The baker may not be gay or even like the fact that gays exist in the world, but are his personal beliefs being restricted or desecrated by the act of baking a cake? What about his religion is being “protected” in this legislation?

And how would that baker feel if while wearing a cross around his neck, he is refused service at a restaurant because the owner of the establishment didn’t like Christians? Once legislation opens the door to discrimination based on religious beliefs, that door would swing both ways.

And that’s what’s really troubling about this Arizona legislation; it injects religion into our civil society in a way that we’ve not seen for many decades. It encodes in law the right of one group of people to discriminate against other groups in the marketplace based on religion. That’s an amazing and very troubling precedent for a nation that prides itself on being egalitarian.

No civil society can exist if it is underpinned by legislated discriminations. Whatever our own personal religious beliefs, we all exist in this culture together. We don’t have to agree with or approve of each other, or like the choices made by those around us. We have to work with people who have different beliefs than we do.

Those who can’t adapt to that reality don’t need to participate in our society where they have to deal with people who are different than themselves. They should become a nun or a monk or join a cult of like-minded people. There’s no place in our culture for those who can’t accept the fact that all humans are different and that our survival depends on respecting those differences.

This nation should not lower itself to the likes of Russia and Uganda, both of which have passed anti-gay legislation in recent months, legislation that has led to violence against gays in those countries.

For the economy and our civil society to function, we have to be able to put personal and religious feelings aside when dealing with others. Our focus should not be about the petty things that make us different, but rather about those values that we have in common regardless of religion: Freedom, integrity, responsibility and respect.

To parse our religious differences in legislation goes against everything the American civil society stands for. It creates a nation of competing tribes rife with petty prejudices, misconceptions, injured feelings and civic unrest.

It was those kinds of things that our forefathers sought to leave behind when they fled other nations and founded this country. Mutual respect and forbearance has been at the center of our nation’s strength and makes us different than most other nations around the world.

The Arizona legislation that would allow discrimination based on religious beliefs contradicts those core American values.

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.

Mike,
Based on the logic you have presented here,
The United States Supreme Court should
strike down it's own ruling to remove prayer
from public schools, because those who
don't believe in God or religion are offended
by having to endure the prayers before the
class starts. In effect, prayer was removed
under the guise of separation of church and
state provisions in the Constitution,when in
point of fact, prayer in schools existed for
decades, yet the separation of church and
state constitutional statutes were in place
while prayer in schools was taking place.

While those who did not want prayer in
schools are happy, those who are not allowed
to "pray" have been discriminated against by
those who refuse to pray.

While I appreciate your logic and zeal, you
can see that our country still has a long
way to go...........

If there is a Muslim teacher in a school who wanted to lead the class in a Muslim prayer, should that be allowed? Or a Jewish teacher? Or should only Christian prayers be allowed?

The issue in Arizona isn't about schools, it's about setting a precedent that would allow anyone to discriminate against others so long as they claim a religious exemption. Once open, that could lead to a lot of unintended consequences.

DuWayne I don’t propose to know everything there is to be learned About our laws or the constitution! But I do know this! Your hypocrisy’s have no boundaries! Stop trying to pick a fight under the guise that you are a conservative! You propose some of the most liberal minded comments I have ever read. Such as your proposal to give teachers a pay raise without the means to pay for such maneuver! As everyone knows we are in trying times. There are many of us just scraping by from week to week. We can’t pay anymore taxes. I for one am up to my neck in taxes being self employed. It is easy to sit back in your recliner at home and say spend more money. I haven’t had a pay raise in over 12 years and pay over $1000.00 per month now for my health care just for me a single man. Who do I see about that? So here is what I propose! Show me a way to pay all these warm and fuzzy ideas of yours without a new tax of any kind and I will be the first one to jump on the wagon! Our should I just drop by the bank and put your name on my 401k? Till then well said Mr.Buffington

Thank you for your comment. Sorry about your
healthcare situation. I believe the person you
want to talk to about that, lives in the
White House, in DC.
Gov. Deal is proposing eliminating all remaining
Teacher Furlough Days, as well as starting
a dialogue for pay raises in the future. I support
both ideas 100%. If you are upset with that,
call the Gov. and tell him how you feel.........
DuWayne

Mike,
Appreciate your comment. The term "religious
exemption" may be a slippery slope in terms
of meaning. Suppose a Gay or Lesbian owner
of a sign and graphics shop has a customer
who supports ant-gay groups. This customer
contracts the shop to make blatantly anti-gay
signs to use at a rally. The owner, who is Gay,
Is offended by the request, and refuses to
make the sign, because his religious belief is
that God loves Gay people too, and by
making the sign, he is causing harm to his/her
personal religious beliefs?

My point is simple. The Constitution has many
laws that go unenforced. Illegal Immigration is one example. The Supreme
Court only hears the cases it feels disposed
to hear, based on lower Federal Court challenges.

Your point about Education is well taken.
However, I would like to point out that no law(s)
can legislate personal religious beliefs, no
matter how distasteful they may be. The other
point I would make is this; What if the law in
Arizona was adopted, and no one challenged
it? Would the Courts on their own take up the
challenge without lower court challenges?
By the way, I believe anyone who wants to
pray in school, should have that right, and
yes, I am. conservative Christian........
DuWayne

Currently, children are allowed to pray in school if they wish. I suspect dozens do every week just before a test.

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